A new Survival Mode update has come to The Long Dark in the form of a new region, improved cooking mechanics, and several bug fixes. The update is now available on all platforms, at no additional charge.

These additions, dubbed Vigilant Flame, will introduce the Hushed River Valley, a multi-leveled region that connects to Mountain Town. The same difficult terrain featured around the town of Milton will be present here, with a full landscape of waterfalls, rivers, and cliff areas. No man-made shelters will be provided, meaning the wilderness won't contain any safeguards, though some natural shelters may be found with enough exploration. Players may see a mysterious Signal Fire guiding them towards potential safe ground, and are urged to keep an eye out for it.

Manual cooking will be utilized in this update, which has adopted a new real-time system that opens up a variety of multitasking options when preparing food. Different cooking times will be attributed to foods, which must be taken into account when placed on hot surfaces to prevent players from ruining their potentially limited supplies. The manual cooking system will also integrate items found directly from the Radial Menu, without needing to be processed through the inventory screen.

The general fixes provided include the addition of several minutes of new Survival Mode exploration music, updated localization, the mending of various gameplay bugs, and some environmental changes, including tweaked item placements, among various other additions.

Buffer moments will be added as an additional narrative collectible, which consists of documents stored within a computer's memory before all the technology in Great Bear was rendered inert following the destruction brought upon by the aurora. Now, when auroras appear at night, players may see computer terminals begin to display snippets of emails, reports, and notes that provide background on the world of The Long Dark.

With the addition of lore, gameplay fixes, and a difficult new map, it's as good of a time as ever to get back into the survival-management frenzy of The Long Dark. If you want to find out more about it, check out our video about The Long Dark back after it left early access here.